Writers and Editors (Pat McNees's blog)

by Pat McNees
Who owns (or is assumed to own) the copyright in an interview seems to vary among professions (say, journalists and oral historians) and sometimes those doing the interviewing seemto be taking too much advantage of the people they are interviewing. So I've been digging for insights into the question Who "Owns" an Interview?, as Mark Fowler (Rights of Writers, 1-7-11) puts it: "So, writers, you almost certainly own some kind of copyright interest in the interviews you conduct -- unless it is a work for hire for an employer or contracting party. But ownership of the copyright is not the end of the story in terms of your control over how the interview is used. In terms of best practices: it's wise, when taping your interviews, to get a statement from your interviewee on the tape that the interviewee is okay with your taping his or her words. If you and the interviewee have some special understanding with regard to copyright ownership (or other matters relating to the interview), it's best to memorialize that understanding beforehand on tape or in writing (if only in an exchange of emails). If you have promised something to your interviewee (e.g., the opportunity to review quotations before publication, or that something the interviewee said will be "off the record"), make sure you abide by the promise."

 Copyright and taped interviews (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press) "Under the federal Copyright Act, to be copyrightable, a work must possess originality and be fixed in a tangible medium. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, but the particular expression of an idea may be. Because of these requirements, much interview material often has a weaker claim to copyright."

One court held that "ownership of a copyright can only belong to the individual who fixes an expressive work in tangible form. ... The case is a reminder of the importance of the 'fixation' requirement in copyright. For that reason, where a journalist is not responsible for recording an interview, but instead receives a taped interview from a third party, they do not own the copyright in the material when they use it.

"If an interviewee or other entity sues a journalist for copyright infringement for using material from a taped conversation, a journalist is likely to have a strong argument that they are entitled to use the material, because of First Amendment principles and the fair use doctrine."

 More protections for patients and psychologists under HIPAA (JENNIFER DAW HOLLOWAY, American Psychological Association, Feb 2003) HIPAA's psychotherapy notes provision safeguards sensitive patient information. "Practitioners have long found it onerous to have to release psychotherapy notes for additional treatment authorization by managed-care companies." Now, she says, managed-care companies are only entitled to certain types of information, not including psychotherapy notes.

 Who Owns Oral History? A Creative Commons Solution (Jack Dougherty and Candace Simpson, Oral History in the Digital Age, Shifting Paradigm Intellectual Property Issues, Fall 2011) They spell out the objections I had to oral historians "taking" copyright from the people they interviewed, which was particularly galling when white historians were claiming right to the words of black people they were interviewing.

Affiliate notice: Purchase something from Amazon after clicking on a link here and this site is paid a small commission, which helps support its development and maintenance (link-checking, etc.)

Godwin's Law: ""As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches"
~ Mike Godwin, creator of Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies, fearing glib use of the term will dilute the meaning of "Never Again"